‘But it isn’t any good, it isn’t any good!’ Anne kept repeating.

‘What isn’t any good, darling?’

‘The pistol. You see, I’ve seen through him!’

‘How do you mean, seen through him? Do you mean he’s an imposter?’

‘No, no. I’ve really seen through him,’ Anne’s voice sank to a whisper. ‘I saw the street lamp shining through a hole in his head.’

‘Darling, darling!’

‘Yes, and the boy, too——’

‘Will you be quiet, Anne?’ cried Jeremy from behind the window curtain. ‘Will you be quiet? They’re saying something. Now Daddy’s pointing the gun at him—he’s got him covered! His finger’s on the trigger, he’s going to shoot! No, he isn’t. The man’s come nearer—he’s come right up to Daddy! Now he’s showing him something, something on his forehead-oh, if I had a torch—and Daddy’s dropped it, he’s dropped the gun!’

As he spoke they heard the clatter; it was like the sound that gives confirmation to a wireless commentator’s words. Jeremy’s voice broke out again:

‘He’s going off with them—he’s going off with them! They’re leading him away!’

Before she or any of them could reach the door, Mrs. Marriner had fainted.

The police didn’t take long to come. On the grass near the garden gate they found the body. There were signs of a struggle—a slither, like a skid-mark, on the gravel, heel-marks dug deep into the turf. Later it was learnt that Mr. Marriner had died of coronary thrombosis. Of his assailants not a trace was found. But the motive couldn’t have been robbery, for all the money he had had in his pockets, and all the notes out of his wallet (a large sum), were scattered around him, as if he had made a last attempt to buy his captors off, but couldn’t give them enough.

THE PAMPAS CLUMP

‘But what is it you don’t like about the pampas clump?’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s untidy for one thing,’ Thomas said. ‘It doesn’t grow evenly and always seems to need a haircut. A shrub should be symmetrical.’

‘It isn’t exactly a shrub.’

‘No, it isn’t. A shrub would be more self-controlled. It’s a sort of grass—and grass needs cutting. Besides, it’s all ages at once, some of it’s green, some sere, and some dead. And then its leaves break and dangle depressingly.’

‘But aren’t we all like that?’

‘Not so obviously. We are more of a piece. Anyone would know that you were forty-one, Fergus, and I was thirty-eight.’

I flattered myself that I looked younger than Thomas; there was a deep line between his brows and his eyes behind his spectacles were tired and restless.

‘How old is the pampas?’

‘Oh, any age. It was here, you may remember, when I bought the house. I’ve often thought of getting rid of it. It’s so suburban. It doesn’t fit into an old garden, like this one is supposed to be.’

‘But if it’s old itself?’

‘It must be, or it wouldn’t have grown to such a size. But that doesn’t make it any the less suburban. People live to a great age in surburbia, and sometimes grow to a great size. . . . And besides being untidy, it makes the grass round it untidy too, it sheds itself.’

‘A plant has to live according to its habit,’ I argued.

‘Yes, but I don’t like its habit, or its habits. It offends my sense of fitness. Besides, it’s dangerous.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Yes. It looks fragile and wispy, but its leaves are like razors, they cut you to the bone. It’s treacherous and dishonest.’

‘Oh, do you think of it as a person?’

Thomas fidgeted.

‘No, of course not, except in so far as something you don’t like takes on a personality for you.’

‘What sort of personality has it?’

‘A semi-transparent one. It blocks the view from the french window, but if you look hard you can see through it—or you think you can. I’m always wondering if there isn’t someone the other side of it who can see me though I can’t see him or her.’

‘Oh, Thomas, how fanciful you are!’

‘Well, you try.’

Obediently I screwed my eyes up. The library had two windows, and from the french window, the one nearest to the fireplace, by which we were sitting, the pampas clump did indeed block the view. It cut the line of the hills across the valley. In the early October twilight it looked quite enormous; its cone-shaped plumes, stirred by a gentle breeze, swept the dusky sky, soaring above its downward-curving foliage as a many-jetted fountain soars above the water fanning outwards from its basin. And like a fountain, it was, as Thomas had said, half-transparent. You thought you could see what was behind it, but you couldn’t be sure. That didn’t worry me; I rather liked the idea of the mystery, the terra incognita behind the pampas. And Thomas should have liked it, too. No one ever called him Tom: at Oxford he was nicknamed Didymus, he was so much in doubt. Did he dislike the pampas because, in some way, it reminded him of himself, and his own weaknesses? I strained my eyes again, trying to see what lay beyond the soaring feathers and the looped, drooping, reed-like leaves. Perhaps . . . Perhaps . . . What did Thomas want me to say?

‘There could be somebody,’ I ventured.

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘But he . . . she . . . they couldn’t see you because . . .’

‘Because why?’

‘Because when a shrub . . . or something of that sort is near to you, it’s more opaque than when it’s at a distance. But if you don’t like it, why don’t you burn it?’

Thomas shuffled in his chair, and answered irritably, ‘I don’t like destroying things. Besides, it would only rise from its ashes like the phoenix.’

‘But if it annoys you——’

‘It doesn’t annoy me all that much. Besides . . .’ he stopped.

‘Besides what?’ I prompted.

‘You’ll think me silly if I tell you.’

‘I find all your objections to the pampas frivolous,’ I said, ‘but tell me.’

‘Well, I have a sneaking wish to find out if there is someone on the other side of it.’

I didn’t laugh because I realized that what he had said meant something to him, something that had been in his mind for a long time. Was it an obsession that he wanted to get rid of, or was he really clinging to it? A ghost that worried him, but one he didn’t want to lay? I had an idea.

‘When the others come——’

He glanced up. It was half-past six by the French clock on the chimney-piece.

‘Are you getting bored?’ he asked. ‘Julia and Hilary will be here any time now.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to have this chance of talking to you alone. It’s so long . . . I meant, couldn’t we arrange a sort of test?

‘Of what?’

‘Well, of whether there if someone behind the pampas clump or not.’

He seemed to ponder deeply. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know. What had you in mind?’

‘A sort of procession.’

‘A procession? What sort of procession?’

‘I hadn’t worked out the details.’

Thomas shook his head, fretfully.

‘I don’t like the idea of a procession. Too many people, and it straggles.’

‘Oh, this would be a small, select one.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Thomas. ‘I’m not with you.’ There was a sound outside the house, scrunchings and small earth-tremors, and then a silence that indicated arrival. ‘Here they are!’ said Thomas, getting up and making for the door. ‘Guests never seem to arrive at exactly the right time.’

‘Have I your permission?——’ I called out after him, but I don’t think he heard.

Julia I knew quite well; she was fair and round and buxom and in her middle thirties. She had lost her husband in the war; and curiously enough as a widow she was twice the person she had been as a wife. As a wife she had taken on her husband’s personality; as a widow she had recovered her own without losing his. Protectiveness was her strong point, and it was clear she had now extended it to Hilary. While her husband was alive she said ‘we’ more often than she said ‘I’: she said ‘we’ still, meaning herself and Hilary.